Posts for phillie

Yesterday was mascot day in Long Island. And while I’m not sure that’s different from any other day in a place where the hockey team, its goalie, two million-year-old building and cartoonish jerseys are a caricature of a professional sports franchise… on this day, the Islanders invited fuzzy figures from local sports teams to attend watch the Islanders get pummeled by the Flyers.

Mr. Met was there, and he was “roundly booed” by Flyers fans when he was introduced. But when he was shown on the local broadcast, the reaction was much more kind. Isles (and Mets) announcer Howie Rose used the opportunity to take a vicious swing at one Mr. Phillie Phanatic. Broad Street Hockey captured the video:

To quote: "As America’s favorite mascot, voted in a national poll. He beat that overrated washed up hack of a Phillie Phanatic."

I like Mr. Met. Think he’s the only thing the Mets have going for them, and he looks exactly goofy enough without being ridiculous. So I won’t sit here and tell you how awful he is. But he’s not better than the Phanatic. And calling our Galapagosian friend a “washed up hack” sounds like Fightin’ words to me.

According to a lawsuit filed last week, an Abington woman claims that while attending a wedding at The Golden Inn in Avalon in 2010, the Phillie Phanatic tossed her and her lounge chair into the shallow end of a swimming pool, causing injuries to her “head, neck, back, body, arms, legs, bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, nerves and tissues”… head, shoulders, knees and toes (KNEES AND TOES!).

"The next day she really felt it and had a difficult time getting out bed and had a difficult time participating in the wedding," Denker said.

Since it was unclear who was actually in the Phanatic costume that day, Peirce is suing both Tom Burgoyne and Matt Mehler or any other unnamed individual who was portraying the Galápagos Islands native there, the complaint claims. The team and The Golden Inn are also named as defendants.

That sounds awful. But it also sounds like a gross exaggeration. Unless you’re diving head-first, being tossed into a swimming pool, even the shallow end, rarely results in serious injuries, one would think. And what does difficult time participating in the wedding mean? She couldn't dance? Couldn't get to the open bar? Couldn't catch the bouquet and have her lifelong dream of being swept off her feet and nuptualized by a tall, dark (green?) and handsome man fulfilled? What. Does. It. Mean.

Philly.com points out that the Phanatic has been sued three times in the last 10 years, though most of those claims result more from the accidental collateral of a giant green thing in our midst than they do a mascot intentionally hurling unsuspecting fans into pools.

The accuser's lawyer, Aaron Denker, said the Phanatic wasn’t a part of the particular wedding his client was attending.

Whatever the case, perhaps The Golden Inn may want to remove that picture of the Phanatic from the home page of its website.

Video after the jump of the Phanatic at The Golden Inn. It appears to have been taken a month before the fan-tossing incident.

…

This story was originally posted with the title "… empty swimming pool," which would have been decidedly more ridiculous. Sorry about that. Somehow, I misread original story. Twice.

32-year-old New York State Senator Daniel Squadron – whose 25th district includes neighborhoods such as Brooklyn, Tribeca, Battery Park City and the Lower East Side – gave some rambling speech recently on the floor of the state chamber. Normally, this wouldn’t be of interest to you… or anyone. But Squadron dropped this peculiar line:

"[The Mets] also have just about the best mascot anyone can ever ask for. And if the Phillie Phanatic wants to come and quarrel with me about that, I believe that this house is going to allow mixed martial arts, and I’m happy to take on that fight."

The Phillies are favored to win a sixth straight National League East title. They have an excellent chance to reach the World Series for the third time since 2008. And yet there’s a new, uninvited guest at their spring camp.

Doubt.

The Phillies’ professionalism and preparedness should sustain them for a time, but the air of inevitability is gone.

U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff ruled Monday that Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon, his family, businesses and charities must pay as much as $83 million to the trustee trying to recover funds to net losers in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. He also ruled that the sides will go to trial March 19 over an additional $303 million that [trustee Irving] Picard is seeking.

The Wilpons’ lawyers had filed a motion to have the case tossed entirely.

Throughout the flight Burke had been in contact with his team, but all of a sudden nobody on the ground was answering his calls. Finally he reached Brian Roberts, the CEO of Comcast, who had led the presentation and was still in Lausanne. As he listened, Burke balled his right hand into a fist, thrust it into the air, and yelled, “Yes!” He and Costas high-fived. Roberts was even more emotional. He would later describe falling back on his hotel room bed in a mix of euphoria, exhaustion, and relief upon hearing that NBC would host the Games through 2020. “I was,” he confessed to me, “moved to tears.”

Awkward.

– Finally, the Phillie Phanatic received a key to the City of Clearwater,stopped by fan-favorite Lenny’s and zoomed around Clearwater Beach this weekend. Here are three videos, produced by the City of Clearwater. The highlight comes at the 20 second mark of the first video, when the unmistakable voice of the Phanatic’s best friend, Tom Burgoyne, can be heard saying, “I’m trying to hold it.”